


What's in a name?

by Sunshine170



Category: Fringe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-30
Updated: 2013-09-30
Packaged: 2017-12-28 01:07:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/985831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunshine170/pseuds/Sunshine170
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not that she regrets the namesake, the memory of a dead child enshrined forever in the identity of the one that lived but for Olivia it was always Etta.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What's in a name?

_Henrietta…_

For Olivia it was always Etta. Etta that she whispered lovingly into new born, pink, baby ears. Etta that she called out to in motherly disapproval as her three year old stood in front of her clutching at the hem of a sundress ruined with finger paints , a riot of yellow and pink splotches on what was once green , nibbling on her lower lip, blue eyes, big and wide.

It's always Etta.

Olivia doesn't use her daughter's full name, rarely having uttered the word outside of her own mind, except to test the sound of it on her tongue once, twice…. She certainly doesn't remember using it to address her, and her memory being what it is… she doesn't remember because she's never done it.

It's not that she regrets the namesake, the memory of a dead child enshrined forever in the identity of the one that lived. It was her idea after all, the choice of the name, the significance… mapping onto what was the most joyous event in her life , an episode so dark that time has expunged it from existence, the weight of the past that never was that she knowingly decided to carry with into their future.

Peter had given her ample time to reconsider. She hadn't.

Henrietta…

But she can't bring herself to say it, to actually call her daughter that. It's too much, feels like too much; conflicted feelings of guilt , shame, fear… excruciating sadness, sadness for Peter, who lost a son before he had the chance to know him, even sadness for  _her,_ the one from whom Olivia still feels like she had stolen a child, even when the original theft had been  _hers._ Most of all sadness for that never was little boy who could have so easily been hers, but for a trans-universal doppelganger love triangle, things would have been different.

They would have been different…

Henry…if she closes her eyes, she can see him, the same roundness of Etta's cheeks, the eyes (hers…), brown hair like Peter…

They'd have the same smile.

She  _won'_ t call her daughter Henrietta….the rest of the world can. Peter can, Peter doesn't though…not really, save the chance occasion when he likes to invoke parental authority by the use of her full name in a mock worthy parody of a soccer mom.

But mostly he doesn't. It hurts him too… she thinks. More than he'll ever let her know.

No, to Olivia, she's always Etta. The moniker is better suited anyway, edgy, sharp… succinct, it fits her child; freed of the burdens she carries in her name… one for the little boy who lived and died in another world, two for the woman who Peter had called mother, even when she was not.

Henrietta Elizabeth….

Both gone, both never existed…. Olivia wonders if they should start saving up for therapy for when Etta comes to know.

_Baby Girl Dunham_ … the nurse had looked to her with a confirming glance as she wrote on her hospital clipboard, while Olivia lost herself in the wonder of her new born, handed to her, freshly bathed and measured and prodded, pink flesh wriggling from underneath a cocoon of a butter yellow receiving blanket, eyes that blinked, slowly in bambi like movements, sizing her up. She hadn't even listened the first time, and so the nurse repeated herself. Peter, focused like her on their daughter, hand pressed gently against the smallest fingers she'd ever seen, had murmured assent for her.

_Bishop,_  Olivia had countered him distractedly; her attention partial on anything that wasn't her baby's warm body nestled against hers.

_"Are you sure?"_  The nurse had looked to Peter who looked decidedly _surprised_  then, a polite expression seeking clarification, her razor fast gaze scanning and noticing the absence of wedding rings. Political correctness stopped her from asking the obvious question, probably wisdom of years spent in the maternity ward, seeing unwed mothers struggle with the question of legitimacy of their children's surnames. Misreading Peter's bafflement for discomfort, she had then given Olivia a look of sympathy.

_"It's Bishop_." Olivia had repeated for her firmly this time, never taking her eyes away her child's face, but being fully aware of the warmth of Peter's smile against her cheek when she said it.

_Baby Girl Bishop,_ read her hospital bracelet.

He'd asked her later if she was sure. If she wouldn't rather give their daughter her name, it was her perogative, he'd assured her. For a man who'd lived an entire life on the edges of the law, he seemed to have a real thing for taking it too literally when it came to his shaky legal standing as a parent, father to a child born out of wedlock, being that he barely existed as a person as it is… an assumed identity built on the social security number of a boy who died when he was eight… Peter Bishop was a fabrication of paperwork.

In his mind, that made Etta more hers than his…

Olivia saw his real fears – that she would someday change her mind and take away parenthood from him, force him to be on the sidelines of their child's life – and had told him to stop being stupid.

_"She's yours_ …" she had repeated fiercely to him till he believed her. Every inch, cell, every heartbeat…yours just as much as mine.

_Maybe more,_ she had kept herself from saying, from saying out loud what they had both no doubt thought about…

And so a ghost goes unmentioned and  _Henrietta Elizabeth Bishop,_ they finally write in the birth certificate.

But it's always Etta.


End file.
